I had a good discussion with a few of my friends about training frequency in martial arts vs results. (Please excuse us- we are engineering students. I think we need to find a mathematical representation of everything before we are happy.) One thing we quickly agreed on was it was not a linear relationship- ie 2 hours a week is not 1/2 as good as 4 hours. So we decided it was an expedentual curve and got started arguing about the rate of decrease of return.

We're a college college and people come in all the time and ask 'How many times would I have to show up a week?' or 'How many times a week do you have to train to get a belt?"

We tell them attending 2 out of 3 sessions is average for 'normal' progression. So that's 4 hours a week. Students who only attend 1 session are considered to be 'maintaining' their skills and nothing more by our Sensei.

Then some of the senior students attend our Sensei's off-campus dojo once or twice a week. So you have people attending 4 session (8 hours) and then the officers go to all 6 sessions offered for a total of 12 hours.

I know doubling your hours doesn't make you learn twice as fast but it helps.

Any thoughts? What type of hours are other people training?

For copying the basic outer form - maybe 2-3 times per week.

For actually training your body to do anything worthwhile - each and every day.

I usually do an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, if there's no group training that day.